Computerized devices often use similar processors and circuits to perform different tasks, relying on the general-purpose nature of many processors to provide a relatively inexpensive and fast means to produce a specialized computerized device. Some processors are specifically designed to be embedded in customized applications, and include a wide variety of features such as analog and digital inputs and outputs, network support, and specialized software libraries supporting such features to make software design for such systems relatively easy.
Some such systems are called embedded systems, reflecting that a processor or computerized system is embedded in the system to perform a specific task, which distinguishes an embedded system from a general-purpose computer that usually lacks the software and hardware configured to perform one or more specific tasks in a specific embedded environment. Examples of embedded systems include controllers for industrial processes, remote monitoring and sensing systems, as well as handheld devices such as cell phones and personal digital assistants. Although some of these devices such as personal digital assistants often include general-purpose software execution among their features, their construction and configuration resembles that of traditional embedded system devices and so they are often considered embedded systems.
Embedded systems can also often be customized to a greater extent than general-purpose computers, discarding hardware components and software drivers not used in a specific application of an embedded system. Embedded processor providers typically provide support for a variety of hardware through very robust software packages supporting a variety of different configurations, such as USB, analog, network, serial, analog-to digital, digital-to-analog, and other interfaces.
Software designed to execute on embedded systems therefore often use a variety of hardware settings in addition to software configuration settings and other parameters to control operation of certain parts of the program. For example, an embedded processor coupled to a network may use hardware settings including an Internet Protocol (IP) address, encryption keys, and other network configuration settings to communicate with other computerized systems. Changing these settings can change how the software operates, and which software instructions are executed. It is therefore desired to manage such settings while debugging embedded software.